“The collar?”
She nodded again. “It’s hard to think of doing things that wouldn’t p-please him. Don’t know if I can do them. And if he speaks to me—”
Isana swallowed. Gently, she drew Odiana’s hands down from her ears and then placed her own over them. “He shan’t,” she said, quietly. “Let me.”
Odiana’s face paled, but she nodded, once.
Isana reached out for Rill and sent the fury down through her touch, into Odiana’s body. Rill hesitated, once within, refusing to respond. Isana had to focus with a sharp effort of will before Isana’s senses pressed through and into the other woman.
Odiana’s emotions nearly overwhelmed her.
Tension. Terrible fear. Rage, frantic and near mindless — all of them trapped beneath a slow and steady pleasure, a languid pulse that radiated out of the collar, threatening at any moment to reverse itself into unspeakable agony. It was like standing within the heart of a storm, emotions and needs spinning past, whirling by, nothing steady, nothing to orient upon. With a slow shudder, Isana realized that Rill had let her touch only lightly upon the water witch’s emotions, on the frantic whirl and spill of them in her mind. She realized that Rill had meant to protect her from exposure to what could all too easily spill over into her own thoughts, her own heart.
Isana frantically pushed that storm of the soul away from her, struggled to focus on her purpose. Through the fury, she sought out the other woman’s ears, the sensitive eardrums. With a sharp, nearly frantic effort, she altered the pressures of Odiana’s body, within her ears. Distantly, Isana heard Odiana let out a pained gasp—and then the drums burst, another explosion of pain and wild emotions—glee and revulsion and impatience predominant.
Isana withdrew her presence from the watercrafter as quickly as she could, jerking her hands and her face away. Even after the contact had been broken, the wild spill of Odiana’s emotions remained, flooding over her, against her, making it difficult to think, to focus on the task at hand.
Odiana’s voice came to her then, very quiet, very gentle. “You can’t fight it, you know,” she half-whispered. “You have to embrace it. One day, they’re all going to come in, holdgirl. You have to let it have you. To do otherwise is . . . is mad.”
Isana looked up to see the water witch smiling, a smile that stretched her mouth in something near a pained grimace. Isana shook her head and pressed the emotions away from her, fought to clear her thinking. Tavi. Bernard. She had to get free, to get to her family. They would need her help, or at least to know that she was all right. She hugged herself and struggled, and slowly her thoughts began to clear.
“We have to get out of here,” Isana said. “I don’t know how much more time we have.”
Odiana frowned at her. “You’ve put out my ears, holdgirl. I can’t hear you, can I? But if you’re saying we should go, I agree.”
Isana nodded toward the floor on the far side of the ring of coals. “Kord’s fury. It’s guarding the floor out there.” She gestured and pointed at the ground.
Odiana shook her head, disagreeing. Her eyes fluttered for a moment, and she gasped in a little breath, fingertips moving to touch the collar. “I . . . I’ll have all I can do just to go. I can’t help you.” She bowed her head and said, “Just take my hand. I’ll come with you.”
Isana shook her head, frustrated. Outside, a door banged open, and Kord’s drunken voice bawled, “It’s time, ladies!” followed by a hoarse cheer from several throats.
Panicked, Isana rose and took Odiana’s hand. She reached out to Rill, sent the fury questing about the roof of the smokehouse, as the men grew closer, gathering up all the liquid water the fury could find. Isana felt it inside her, an instinctive awareness of what was there, of the water in the snow-filled air, the meltwater within the smokehouse and in the ground around it.
Isana felt it and gathered it together in one place and then, with a low cry, released it.
Water flooded down from the roof in a sudden wave that washed over the coals in a swirling ring. The coals spat and hissed furiously, and in seconds the air was filled with thick, broiling hot steam.
Without, there was a cry, and Kord’s feet pounded closer. The heavy bolt to the door slid back, and it flew open.
With another flick of her hand, Isana sent the steam boiling out into Kord’s face, out to the men behind him. Cries and yowls filled the yard, as men scrambled back from the door.
Isana focused on the ground before them, and at the edge of the now-guttered coals, water condensed from the steam into a shining strip of liquid as wide as a plank. She had never attempted anything like that before. Holding clear in her mind what she wanted Rill to do, Isana took a deep breath and stepped out onto the plank of liquid. There was a tension in it, wavering, but there, and it held her weight without allowing her foot to sink through to the floor.
Isana let out a low cry of triumph and stepped out onto the plank, tugging Odiana by the hand. She led her to the door of the smokehouse and leapt out onto the earth without, Odiana faltering, but staying close.
“Stop!” Kord bellowed, within the cloud of steam. “I order you to stop! Get on the ground, bitch! Get on the ground!”
Isana glanced at Odiana, but the woman’s face was distant, her eyes unfocused, and she stumbled along in Isana’s wake. If the collar forced a reaction to Kord’s voice upon her, she gave no sign of it.
“Rill,” Isana hissed. “The nearest stream!” And with an abrupt clarity, Isana felt the lay of the land about them, the subtle tilt down and away from the mountains and toward the middle of the valley, to a tributary that fed, eventually, into one of the streams that ran down through Garrison and into the Sea of Ice.
Isana turned and ran over the cold ground, now using Rill only to help her know the way to the nearest water, to keep her blood running hot through her bare feet to help them resist freezing. She could only hope that Odiana would have the presence of mind to do the same.
Behind them, Kord bellowed to his fury, and the ground to her right erupted with writhing, vicious motion, ice and frozen earth and rocks thrown into the air. Isana swerved her course to run over deeper snow, more thickly crusted ice, and prayed that she would not slip and break her leg. It was only that coating of frozen water that gave her any sort of protection at all from the wrath of Kord’s earth fury.
“Kill you!” bellowed Kord’s voice behind them, in the dark. “Kill you! Find them, find them and kill them! Bring the hounds!”
Her heart racing with fear, her body alight with excitement and terror, Isana fled into the night from the sounds of mounting pursuit, leading her fellow captive by the hand.
CHAPTER 31